Art Oiit-of-Doors 



himself, it means, in a great majority of 

 cases, a mere love for being out-of-doors, 

 for planting things, and for watching them 

 develop. Or, at the most, it is apt to mean 

 no more than a taste for Nature's individual 

 products — a special love for trees, an inter- 

 est in shrubs, a passion for flowers. The 

 cases are very rare in which it means a taste 

 at all analogous to what we understand by a 

 taste for art ; that is, an appreciation of or- 

 ganized beauty, a love for the charm of con- 

 trasting yet harmonizing lines and masses, 

 colors, lights and shadows ; a delight in in- 

 telligent design, in details subordinated to a 

 coherent general effect. Yet it is only such 

 a taste as this which means a real feeling for 

 Nature's beauty, and which can make the 

 surroundings of our homes really beautiful. 



We have had some admirable landscape- 

 gardeners in America ; and one of them, Mr. 

 Olmsted, is the greatest living master of his 

 craft, if not the very greatest who has lived 

 since gardening art has dealt with landscape- 

 effects at all. Naturally these artists are 

 more often asked to manage large problems 

 than small ones. But as yet they are not 



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